So, let's try breaking down a problem maybe a more everyday problem in the pages so that we can think about changing some of those pages to generate new avenues for solving new problems, doing new things. So I thought, we'd-. Think outside the bag. Think outside of the bag. A good friend, SC Johnson, sends us Ziploc bags, right? We'll keep it simple. Let's think about a Ziploc bag, right? Let's see what are the parts. So, there's a box, right? There's an opening. There's an opening, right? There's an opening. There's a-. Mechanism for closing it. A mechanism for closing it. There's a seam at the bottom. There is a seam at the bottom. There's a bag with some plastic, transparent plastic. So, parts? Right? I think about changing those parts, right? So intervening and thinking about the new parts. Yes. So, that's a new part. I can think of glass rather than plastic, right? Absolutely. And then it could be an artistic display, right? What do you think? Right. Absolutely yes, or it could be colored, so you could have blue, and green, and pink, or whatever colors to it, so you can color code whatever your doing. Right. We've seen all kinds of openings, right? So this one has this little tab thing on top to make it a little easier to open a bag, that was apparently an innovation. Right. Then there are slidy things to close them, right? There some bags with sliders. Perhaps, the shape itself could change. Right. Depending on what you want to store in it. Yes. So they could be longer or a bigger, right? Square. Right. I mean packing a big sandwich for lunch. So, what's the next element? Okay. The next one is Actions. Actions, right? What can you do with this? Right, well, you could store things. You could store things. You could hide things. Well, it's hard with a clear one, but if it's not clear, you can hide something in it. So, each step builds on the other, right? Exactly. Actually, you make unique combinations depending on what I did earlier. Right. So if I change the coloring then maybe the actions there or change the opening, the action is different, right? Right. Yes. But the slider opening, it may not hold liquids so well, but if one of these openings, you could turn it upside down and carry a goldfish. Right. Would be an actions. So you can put things in it. You can open it. You could blow it up. I don't know, you could maybe suck the air out of it, right? Yes, which could be useful. Could be useful. Draw something. Yes, all kinds of things. So, actions? Right. Goals. Goals, right? What might we do with one of these things? So, I might want to store something in it, right? Organize something. Organize, right. Put things into different bags. Right. Yes, what are the goals might I have. Well, you can also think about, I'm going to carry food in it. I'm going to organize parts in it. I'm going to put a gift inside of it. So, goal might be organization? You might think about. Yes. I'm in the mindset of trying to organize something. I could be in the mindset of trying to entertain people, so I could use the bag, right? As a source of entertainment, toss it in the air, I don't know. We don't get out much. Right. That sounds fun to me. Well, I'm stuck here, playing with plastic bags. I love it. So goals. Right. And then event, right? What's the overarching event that we're dealing with, might making the kids lunch. It's a Birthday party. It's a Birthday Party. I can use it to store the gifts that you give kids on the way out. Right. Yes. Party favors. Yes. Maybe these could be decorated with designs or drawings, right? Rather than being sort of very functional and not maybe so decorative, if you could have a decorative version, and then you could just be given right away. The event is a crime scene. I could store fingers in it. That's different, or traveling. I supposed to push that thing. Or traveling? We could put clothes inside if it was larger. That's right. Yes. We're playing with possibilities. Yes. Exactly. And then self-concept, right? Who am I? Right. So, we just talked about a party host story, a gift giver. A nice person, so I think about, I'm going to give gifts in that bag, right? So my goal motivates what I think about. If I'm not a nice person that opens up another area of possibilities, right? I could put it over your head. I don't want to listen to this guy anymore. You listen to more ideas. That's right. So, the intuition you're having is exactly right which is that when you change one of these aspects, the parts, the actions, the goals, the event, the self-concept, it might cause a change to another one. Right. What we've been noticing is that a part or action change tends to have smaller effects, whereas goal, event, and self-concept changes tend to be much larger. And I think those are the ones you often take for granted, right? Exactly. The value of the framework is really highlighting and the need to think systematically about each part of the process, right? And I think that we sort of tend to get locked into one particular one and ignore all the possibilities, right? Yes. So what if I was a dog walker versus what if I'm a party host that sends you down completely different pathways, totally different events, different goals, different actions, different parts, and by starting with self-concept, or event or goal, you're much more likely to go in a broader array of directions. Right. Generate more divergent possibilities. I think we just did that with that Ziploc bag. All that with the Ziploc bag. Excellent. One more example of pages breaking down a problem. All right. We did a deep dive with a Ziploc bag, which is fun, but just to get some practice with the framework, let's do another, work through another example of using pages to systematically change our perspectives. So I want to talk about one problem that's a little bit richer and more complex, and when you've probably often read about in American newspapers which is, how do we reduce gun-related deaths in this country? Sure, like a brainstorming prompts, so what could we do? What can we do about gun-related deaths? What are some solutions to that. Well, so let's break it down. What are the parts? Bullets, gun, bullets. Right. Can we maybe change those parts, right? So we think of arrows instead of bullets. That would be one related to the gun-related deaths. Right. Yes. Well, I mean, so that kind of thinking leads to things like tasers, right? Right. It may incapacitate someone, but not kill them, right? So we reduce gun-related deaths by having a different object instead of a gun, and different bullets, right? You have rubber bullets or something like that. Great. And we make a gun less likely fire accidentally, right? Smart guns are-. So intervening on the parts, does make a certain amount of sense at least to start. Yes. What about the next one, actions are? Yes. What are some actions that we could think about? And we're thinking about gun-related deaths. Sure. You can think about all the different processes. Where do you buy a gun? And then you think about who gets to shoot one? Right. Whether you can train people. You can also think about faster emergency arrivals, right? Okay. If the ambulance shows up more quickly then fewer people die if will get shot. Right. Better hospital care for people who are shot. There are lots of different actions that you might think that are part of that process. Change about the gun. The next one is, what came to mind was guns. Guns-related deaths. All right. So goals, that's one of the goals. Goals, right. We could reduce deaths. We could increase care for people, but you could also think about sort of reducing suicides, right? One of the big areas of gun-related deaths is, people committing suicide. So that may be a goal is to tamp down the suicides. And reducing accidents, which would lead to the training again, right? As a solution. Or reduce homicides, right? Which is probably what first came to mind, so that might be policing or community efforts, things like that. Yes. What's the next one? Yes. So events, what might be the event? We're just thought of it here, right? You think about? Crime. Crime, right? There's also domestic violence to consider, right? So, that the event is often triggered by that's event. That we see a different set of potential solutions revolving around the home, right? Right. What other kinds of events we could think of, a shooting galleries maybe, right? Or hobbies. They can go, right. Yes. People, there are actions to take ways there. What are the kinds of events might be you think about the context of guns. Well, you can think about also-. Celebration. Celebrations. I had a wedding in Russia and guns went off. Guns went up in the air? Wow! Congratulations. I think you're right exactly. And then self concept. Who are we? So, are we in a city, am I in urban environment? Am I living in a rural environment? Am I a hunter? For example. That might be a very different mindset. Concerns for my own safety versus my out to have fun. Yeah. They're two very different self concepts. Yeah. Someone who is a hobbyist versus someone who sees themselves as under threat versus a collector. Right. Another sense of self that would potentially change. And then, some formal roles like policeman or police woman or soldier. Right. They are very different. Very different kinds of situations that would make you think differently, it's like body armor. It starts to come to mind. Father of a girl who just started to date might be another concept. I have no idea what you're talking about. I have no idea what you're talking about. So, yeah, if we think about that you could think about, if we jump back to say parts for example. So, where does that lead us? And we've talked a little bit about that, but you could think about well, are we dealing with a domestic violence situation so then that might lead to a certain set of solutions whereas if you're thinking about suicide that might be different. If you're thinking about Regent say for up north versus down south or in the city which is out of the city, now we have different- We have different parts themselves, what kinds of guns are you thinking about? Change by the role and by self concept by dealing with an AK47, it's myself concept to a member of a gang that's under threat, these are very different way of framing the problem and also a different set of potential solutions. And we can spiral out from there. So, gun related deaths where guns are manufactured. Maybe the manufacturing is really dangerous. I don't know maybe it's really polluting or something. Right. So, there may be all these peripheral ways of thinking about this process. And also even just could be the event itself. We're talking about death but death is actually a very narrow frame as well. We can't think about injuries. Yes. Debilitating injuries that occur which may be another big problem. Right. So, all of these things kind of feed on each other. Yeah. But by thinking about PAGES, we broke down and generated all these different starting points for thinking about things that you might be able to do. And I think that's the benefit of a framework is that, it can be a little more systematic. Right. And a little bit more guided as a process. So, it might be your problem we can actually solve at some point. Exactly. Yeah, hopefully. It takes practice to break situations down into PAGES. So, I wanted to provide two more examples as practice and to make an important point about the process. Here's a problem that I think I got from Professor Dick Failer. Restaurants attract attention when they first open and often have waiting lists for reservations. But a year or two later, many of those restaurants are gone. What can a restaurant do to capitalize on the initial attention they get when they first opened to make it more likely they'll still be around? So, let's start with what's obvious and then use that to help identify the maybe less obvious. For example, we're talking about a restaurant maybe it's in Chicago. So, that's a part, waiting lists that's a part too and it implies an action, taking reservations. Why do restaurants take reservations? That is what goals do they have in mind. Well, one goal might be to keep people from waiting. Another goal might be to commit people to coming. And whose goals are we talking about anyway? That is which self concepts are we considering? Perhaps we are thinking about the restaurant owner, that's one self concept or the person coming to dine, that's another self concept or walk ins, that's a different self concept for a diner. Each of these are companies at different situation or event. A last minute idea as part of a night out, that would be a walk in. A plan for a great evening, that would be dinner with a reservation or running a successful restaurant and that would be the owner's perspective. Here's a different example. You are a human resource manager of a large company with a reputation for treating employees compassionately, a long period of weak sales and high operating costs are threatening your business. What do you do? Well, again we can start with the obvious, a human resource manager is a self concept. A long period of weak sales and high operating costs, is an event. What goals might we have? Lowering costs, increasing sales or perhaps freezing hiring. What actions could we take? We could increase prices. We could re-negotiate with suppliers, we could start a voluntary separation program. And then what parts are there? There's a company, a reputation, a set of suppliers, and on we go. There's an important point to make here. We can think of the same element of a situation in different ways. For example, maybe a voluntary separation plan could be an action in the poor company performance event, or maybe the voluntary separation plan is an event all to itself with a series of actions involved in it. That is, the very same element can be interpreted differently depending on whether we see it as an action within a larger event or as a larger event itself within which many actions take place. So, as another example think about I don't know, something ordinary, making a bed. That could be the event with actions like removing the sheets or putting on fresh sheets and so on or making a bed could be an action within the larger event of cleaning the house. So, we can form a different interpretation of the very same element, say in this case making a bed, that places it in a different role, say an event or an action within our perspective. The point of using PAGES to help us articulate our current perspective is not to determine what some aspect of a situation really is. We can think about items in different ways. Instead the point of using PAGES is to help find out how to change our perspective. Can I see making a bed as an event? Yeah. What could follow from seeing it that way? Could I see making a bed as an action? Yes Again, what would follow from seeing it this way instead? Our goal is to articulate our current perspective, whatever that may be so that we can help ourselves use that perspective to generate ideas as well as to help ourselves change our perspective to provide an alternative foundation for generating new ideas So, we're always forming stories to account for what we're doing. Maybe we're just getting up, going to work or maybe it's the biggest deal of our lives at work. So, whatever it may be. You're forming some story. This is my day. This is what's happening. And in the course of forming that story, you have to think about things in a particular way. This is a mug rather than a paperweight. And we do that because we have to make choices because we can't take into account all possible sources of information. So, in forming our story, we make these choices that end up forming a particular perspective. Exactly. And now we know that that perspective has parts and actions and goals and an event and a self concept for who we are as the narrators of our stories. And then once we change our perspective, it then becomes an opening through which we can now change our story moving forward or even rethink prior assumptions. Yeah. So, who we think we are and what we think we've done, what we think we could do and change. Right. Yeah. And so the story, that history may stay the same but our interpretation, our perspective on it may change and that may open up new pathways for us to take. Yeah. Exactly. So, putting it all together, we have concepts we've put them into roles, the different functional parts of our perspective, and we use that to guide our stories. And then if we change the perspective, new story.
